Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Great Race

For the past 32 years Living History Farms in Des Moines, Iowa, has hosted a special off road race. It is always on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I went to watch it this year as my daughter runs in it.

From a distance it looks fairly normal.



But looking a bit closer, well ....



What in the world??!



Apparently this is not an overly serious race!



Here's Ken and Barbie! You can't see Ken but this couple was on the front page of the Des Moines Register this morning.



The race is a fund raising event (if you had not already guessed!). But it is a real race despite the crazy costumes. They even run through water several times during the event.



You can see even Santa Claus was running this year. There were about 7,500 runners and they were from 38 states.



One of my favorite costumes was Thing #1 (or is she Thing #2?).



And I liked this young man, too. Reminds me of those Mountain Dew ads that were so popular years ago (Ya Hoo! Mountain Dew!!).



Who could resist the always popular Gumby??



It was truly an .... amazing race.

Thanks for stopping by.

7 comments:

Hilary said...

Oh yeah, that does look like fun. I love the Pacman costumes.. perfect idea for a race.

Anonymous said...

Awesome... but running through water in November in Iowa? Nah.... not this girl.

Great costumes and well thought out though so great fun for the onlookers.

Di

Country Girl said...

Go Bert, go! Where's Ernie?

L. D. said...

I didn't realize it was a costume run. It looks like a popular race through the woods and across the streams. Thanks for sharing the pics.

Pauline said...

I saw a few folks disguised as runners ;) Looks as though the runners had as much fun as the watchers.

Jo said...

Gumby is one of my favorite characters. That was very imaginative. But my goodness, running through water ... brrr ...

Small City Scenes said...

What a fun but grueling race. Through water??? No way! Isn't it supposed to be cold this time of year? LOL Great pictures. How did your daughter do?
Thanks for your nice comments on my blog.
November snow and cold weather is very unusual here for November and since we don't ever (well once every few years) get much snow it is always an amazement.
I am glad you saw the ice horse--not everyone did. It surprised me too.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Just enjoy each and every day. MB